10 Years Later: Have we done enough?

I’ve often thought if everyone could have the opportunity of rocking a baby girl to sleep every night, the world would be a better place. I know it’s true for me. Holding my sleeping daughter, I often find myself making vows to make our world the kind of place she deserves – the kind of place every kid deserves.

I, along with many, made a vow such as this in the wake of 9/11. The hatred, fear, and overwhelming grief many Christians experienced 10 years ago did more to form us as being “missional” than any fad-ish book or cutting edge sermon ever could: we will do all we can to ensure this does not happen again.

But have we done enough? It’s easy to see what we’ve done nationally: we take our shoes off before flying, we build walls on our southern border, we invade various countries killing exponentially more than was killed in our country, we bankrupt ourselves with trillions in military spending.

But what about us? Have we done enough? Has the church, and communities of faith, done what we can to change our world for the better? Because there are more ways to respond to terrorism than ceding the action to our government; in fact, God’s primary instrument in the world for overcoming evil is not the government, but the church. We can do what we’re best at doing. For instance, we can:

LOVE THOSE ON THE FRINGEMore than a clash of civilizations, 9/11 showcased the imbalance of power between those of us in the dominant West and disenfranchised people on the fringes of power. God always has preferential love for those on the fringe; be they orphans, widows, and immigrants or sinners, poor and oppressed. Have we committed ourselves to loving our global neighbors, giving ourselves sacrificially, and serving those in need? Has the church done all we can to show that you make the world a better place not through the terribly misguided and violent actions of the hijackers from 9/11, but through Christ-like acts of nonviolent love and service? Many have committed themselves to just this level of loving the global community. Paul Schrag shares about two who gave the ultimate sacrifice, “Tom Fox, 54, a Quaker from Virginia who served with Christian Peacemaker Teams, died March 9, 2006, in Baghdad, Iraq, murdered by hostage takers who held him and three other CPT members for four months. Glen Lapp, 40, of Lancaster, Pa., a Mennonite Central Com­mittee worker, was shot to death Aug. 5, 2010, along with nine other aid workers while on an eye-care mission in a remote part of Afghanistan. The Taliban claimed responsibility. Fox’s and Lapp’s lives and deaths testified to the courage and sacrifice of Christians who take risks for peace.” We need to pour our best energies into nonviolent relationships with those on the fringes of world society and loving them with God’s accepting love. One Anabaptist friend of mine suggests that footwashing is a symbolic way forward.

WORSHIP GOD ALONE.
Through our worship we see the beautiful new world that God is creating, and are invited again and again (through song, spoken word, ritual, and sending/blessing) to join in creating this new world out of the old. It’s through our worship we see the world and ourselves as we are intended to be, and the path forward. Worship is an act of orientation, helping us to see the world as it truly is in order to navigate the shattered landscape that is our reality.

Through worship we see that God is re-creating our world in the image of shalom and not empire. We see that God is transforming swords and bombs into plowshares. We hear that the gospel is peace and not war. We embrace that Jesus, and not Caesar, Bush or Obama, is king. Our worship empowers us to see that “the Prince of peace is Jesus Christ. We who were formerly no people at all, and who knew of no peace, are now called to be a church of peace. True Christians do not know vengeance. They are the children of peace. Their hearts overflow with peace. Their mouths speak peace, and they walk in the way of peace (Menno Simons).” Has our worship ascribed worth to God alone, above all earthly powers? Has it given us the courage to pledge our allegiance to God and no one else, committing our best energies to joining in God’s mission in the world?

LAMENTOne stark message of 9/11 was the incredible gap between what is actually Christian and what some people perceived to be Christian behavior. The Christianity bin Laden seemed to abhor so much isn’t anything I’m familiar with in the least. It felt to me like the extremists set up a Christian/Western straw man that they set out to destroy. But here’s what we can’t miss: they were wrong. Their perception of what it means to be a Christian is absolutely wrong. We have to work harder to change the perception of Christianity in the world! We learned this from Nietzsche, Marx, and Hitchens too, whose versions of Jesus and Christianity they deny are all wrong, and nothing I’d be interested in if they were true. We would not be hated so passionately if we were more carefully understood.

You see, Christianity is not synonymous with Western culture, Baywatch and Reality TV, imperialism & US military might, globalization and the loss of jobs. When Fox’s torture-supporting TV show “24” is broadcast around the world and perceived to be Christian, we have an image problem. But it’s a problem we’ve created, pleading time and again for the moniker “Christian nation” as if it were a birthright and not a blockade. Like a bowl of spaghetti with marinara sauce, we’ve allowed western and Christian cultures to be collapsed into one, when they very much are not. It’s time to separate them out. Like the separation we’ve demanded from our Muslim friends and neighbors from the Muslim rhetoric of the 9/11 perpetrators, we must also separate our faith from it’s Western and militaristic cultural mold. Do you lament the mis-perceptions of the Christian faith some people hold? Are you willing to do everything in your power to help the world see Jesus as he really is, not dressed in western garb and culture?

Ten years later, we each in our own way have done what we can to ensure this won’t happen again- not here, not anywhere. For me, that has meant a deeper commitment to joining Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, in creating a beautiful new world for everyone. Today, as you remember, grieve, mourn and strengthen vows, may you do so in an ever deepening assurance that God has love for the whole world.